Lemo Rockwood and "The Marriage Course"

Professor Rockwood's
course on relationships, marriage and family was one of the most sought
after classes at Cornell, a favorite among both male and female students
throughout the university. While Rockwood's progressive ideas and
the material's explicitly sexual nature made the course extremely
popular with the majority of students, it also provoked considerable
anxiety among the more conservative members of the Cornell community.

Professor Rockwood's marriage course was one of the most sought after
courses on Cornell's campus, popular among both men and women throughout
all the colleges. Her teaching approach combined traditional historical
and anthropological approaches with an emphasis on experimentation
and personal experience. She describes her course in the 1938/39 course
catalog as:

A course dealing with social and economic changes which
today are influencing the relations of men and women before
and after marriage; scientific information which has promoted
the study of mate choice and marital adjustment; the development
of affection in the individual, and the achievement of heterosexuality;
substitutes for mate love and the adjustment of the single
person; the choice of a mate; courtship and engagement; the
nature of the marriage relationship and factors which influence
adjustment to this relationship; adjustments to parenthood.

Although wildly popular among the majority of students, the marriage
course was not without its critics. The combination of Rockwood's
progressive ideas and the explicitly sexual nature of the material
provoked considerable anxiety among the more conservative members
of the faculty, administration and student body. A letter from Miss
Allen, then Dean of Women, to Miss Vincent, Dean of Home Economics,
dated February 24, 1949, expresses concern over what Allen terms
a "problem of semantics." Citing material in the marriage course
as support, several fraternities had established "dark rooms" for
the sole purpose of drinking and necking in private. Allen expressed
her dismay that Professor Rockwood advocated and encouraged pre-marital
relations in her course. In her own subsequent response to Dean
Allen, Professor Rockwood defended the validity of her marriage
course, asserting that she could not be held responsible for students
misunderstanding or misinterpreting what she said in class.